The present invention relates generally to apparatus useful in rehabilitative programs for paraplegic and quadriplegic individuals, and even health maintenance programs for individuals that are totally unable to care for themselves such as those in a deep coma, and more particularly to method and apparatus for assisting such individuals to exercise in a true walking manner, and concomitantly for implementing rhythmic modulation of blood flow and pressure in a manner generally suitable for reestablishing nominally acceptable cardiovascular circulation and muscular tissue regeneration throughout the body and particularly in the lower extremities.
Paraplegic and quadriplegic individuals have by definition suffered traumatic injuries to their spinal cords that have rendered them unable to sense contact with and/or to control functions of the portions of their bodies located beyond their injury sites. Of first concern and most immediate danger following such an injury is a loss of ability to adequately control blood pressure and to regulate distribution of blood flow beyond the injury site. It can take days or even weeks for such individuals to re-acquire sufficient blood pressure control to allow them to be put into a sitting position without “blacking out” for lack of blood flow through their brains. Specifically, their ability to adequately control cardiovascular system arterioles and pre-capillary sphincters has been significantly compromised, and furthermore, major portions of their venous pumping systems have been substantially deactivated as a result of the obvious inactivity of their legs. Also of concern for such individuals as well as those that are totally bedridden for any reason is the difficulty they experience in servicing infections due to any cause as a consequence of compromised cardiovascular circulation. In fact, such infections are a major cause of death for such individuals even while they remain hospitalized.
It is believed herein that the present inventor's previous experience with particular reference to a claimed “method for enhancing a patient's cardiovascular activity and health” described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,261,250 B1 entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ENHANCING CARDIOVASCULAR ACTIVITY AND HEALTH THROUGH RHYTHMIC LIMB ELEVATION and issued to Edward H. Phillips on Jul. 17, 2001, and a claimed “method for enhancing physical activity and cardiovascular health” described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,592,502 B1 entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ENHANCING PHYSICAL AND CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH, AND ALSO FOR EVALUATING CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH and issued to Edward H. Phillips on Jul. 15, 2003 is pertinent to solving the cardiovascular circulation problems of paraplegic and quadriplegic individuals described above. Because of their obvious pertinence to the subject at hand, both the '250 and '502 patents are expressly incorporated herein by reference.
Of additional interest herein however, is the possibility of retraining paraplegic and quadriplegic, and even severely brain injured individuals, to gradually begin to support their own weight and perhaps even eventually to walk on their own via utilization of method and apparatus for enabling them to continuously exercise in a true walking manner while supporting selectively increased portions of their own weight. This is believed herein to be feasible because of experiments previously conducted with a paraplegic individual on apparatus configured in accordance with the incorporated '502 patent wherein that individual not only dramatically improved her cardiovascular circulation and developed muscle mass having improved tone, but she was able to voluntarily fire her mid-torso, hip flexor and thigh muscles as though she were walking. In fact, in so doing she was so violently firing her thigh muscles that she was hyper-extending her knees.
This is particularly exciting in view of recent experiments wherein new genetically matched spinal cord is formed and then positioned in such a manner as to link the previously severed spinal cord elements of paraplegic and quadriplegic patients. In some cases such experiments have been conducted with tissue grown from embryonic tissue, while in other and perhaps even more exciting cases, such experiments have been conducted with tissue grown from the patients' own DNA after that DNA had been directly harvested via their olfactory cavities. One problem with these recent experiments however, is an observed difficulty in retraining these patient's neurological systems to correlate signals coming in a “South-North direction” with actual bodily locations and to concomitantly direct operative commands to particular muscle groups in a “North-South direction”. Another problem is a tendency for many paraplegic individuals to selectively contract some muscle groups in such a manner that their lower extremities tend to physically interfere with one another during any type of exercise. Thus, positive control of foot and knee location is a requirement for any effective rehabilitative equipment. It is believed herein that the apparatus to be disclosed hereinbelow will resolve such problems and that the repetitive walking motion induced by it will prove to be instrumental in achieving the herein expressed goals. Thus, providing method and apparatus for implementing the above-described improved cardiovascular circulation, growth of high quality muscle mass, and support of selected portions of their own weight and perhaps even of walking by paraplegic, quadriplegic and brain injury patients are primary objects of the present invention.
There are of course other handicapped or partially handicapped persons that are desirous of regaining the ability to walk. Obvious examples of such persons are those acclimating to newly fashioned artificial lower limbs (i.e., unfortunately now including military, other war victims, and even more recently, those that suffered lower limb amputations as a result of the tsunami that occurred in the Indian ocean), victims of stroke, the 60,000 diabetics who suffer lower limb amputations each year in the U.S. alone, and those with any form of neuromuscular disease. Thus, providing such individuals with apparatus for implementing the above-described support of selected portions of their own weight while re-acclimating to walking is yet another object of the present invention.